Homecoming
by in'black'and'white
Summary: Emily wants to come back to the team now that Ian Doyle is no longer a threat, but with the guilt of having tricked them and the secrets she's still keeping, that's harder than it seems. Rated "T" to be safe. Spoilers for "Lauren".
1. Visiting Hours

_Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Mark Twain._

She could not help but hope that Aaron Hotchner would come walking through the hospital doors and tell her that he was glad to have her back. But neither could she pretend that the past had not happened and that she had forced him to live a lie with the people he cared most about in the world. She was intelligent enough to know that forgiveness was always a lot to ask for.

"There's a man here to see you." The nurse seemed to almost creep up on her. She jumped and, upon seeing the nurse's shock and confusion, offered an apologetic smile.

It would take some time to getting used to the world being so safe again. Naturally there were dangers and naturally she would have to face them. But an unnatural danger and the biggest threat to her life, and the lives of others, was gone. Ian Doyle was dead. She could stop running, stop looking over her shoulder. She could return home.

No - that was something she could not do. She had faked her own death and forced two of the people she loved to play along with it. She had known that what she was doing was going to hurt the others but she had consoled herself, and Hotch and Jennifer Jareau at times, with the knowledge that she had had no other choice if she wanted to keep them safe - if she wanted to stay alive. But she saw now that she had been foolish to hope for all those years that when it finally ended, if it ever did, she would be welcomed back. His absence was a warning to stay away.

"Who?" she asked the male nurse. She knew that Doyle may have been dead but she still was not about to take any chances.

The nurse looked at her case files sitting at the end of the bed. "Said his name was Clyde Easter - British accent?"

Her heart leaped and her head snapped up from the nails she had been picking at. At the same time her hopes were shot down like a lead balloon. Clyde - who had kept so many secrets from her, and who had been so mysterious right up until Tsia's death, and who had never even made an attempt to get in contact with her afterwards.

_Well_, a small voice inside of her argued_, how was he supposed to know you were still alive? Did you tell him?_

She was glad to see that he had survived the three years of Doyle's escape - she was well aware that other agents, some whom she had never worked with personally and others whom she had, had not been so lucky in keeping themselves out of the man's firing line. But again this did nothing to ease her suspicions. He was good, but was he _that_ good? Surely it only proved that he had sold them all out and bought himself protection?

"Can you send him in please?" she asked. "And is there any chance you could get me some water, I'm feeling kind of feint-? Thanks."

The male nurse left the room and as she heard his footfalls distance themselves on the corridor's tiles she eased herself out of bed and hurried to the bag she kept underneath. From it she withdrew a small handgun which she had kept with her at all times for the past three years (it had helped her out in lots of_...tricky_ situations)_._

She was confused and she knew that if things were not simple then that meant there was room for suspicion. She could not understand how Clyde Easter would have known that she was alive and recovering in a hospital bed - or more she could not understand how _he _could have this knowledge, and yet Doyle had remained blissfully ignorant to her being alive up until the very moment of his death. If Clyde had known then he would have betrayed her - she knew because it's what she would have done as a spy.

And how _could _Clyde know that she hadn't died at Doyle's hands anyway? Aside from herself only two other people in the world knew that and both of them were people she had been _sure_ she could trust with her life at all times. She knew that in the unlikely case that they had told anybody else, it would not have been a double-crosser like Clyde. Hotch would have been able to read the signs, he would have known.

In any case he would not have revealed her to _anybody_ while Doyle was alive. He just didn't work like that and she knew it. It was one of the reasons why he was the first person she had turned to in the hospital that day when it had all been arranged. That meant that Hotch _knew _she was alive and in hospital, and that he also knew Doyle was truly dead and no longer a threat.

But if he knew all of that for sure then why wasn't he here himself? She knew that the answer was one she had long suspected - he would never forgive her for the role she had forced him to play and the hurt she had put the team through. And if she was to continue to pride herself on being a realist then she had to accept that him, or the others, welcoming her home had never even been a possible scenario_. _

_Not that it ever should have been_, she reminded herself sternly_. Look at what he did to protect you - and you still haven't even told him the whole truth yet_. She shuddered. She could never tell anybody the whole truth. Morgan had been wrong that time in the car, one of her last memories of him, when he had said that she could come to him with anything.

Clyde strolled into the room with a few more grey hairs than she remembered previously and few more lines on his face. His eyes were watery and there was a sad sort of crinkle to his lips. "Emily." She gripped the gun tighter underneath the covers of her blanket. "Emily - thank _God _you're alive."

She knocked aside his words and tried to remember how she had felt looking at Tsia's body. "What do you want?"

"To see you." He did not even sound offended. He raised his hands. "Emily, I know that you think I betrayed you, but I never have - I never _would_."

"How come you're the only one still alive then? And why did Tsia end up with a bullet through her head?" she fought to keep her voice even. "I don't know why you're here. But the nurse is coming back in three seconds and you've given him your real name."

He let out a weary sigh. "Which shows that I have no intention of hurting you. And that you still don't trust me." His eyes flickered to her hand beneath the blanket. "Keep the gun if you want - but I haven't brought anything to harm you with."

"You are one of the best spies I ever worked with, Clyde, you know I can't do that or believe you." She told herself that she didn't want to anyway.

His eyes locked onto hers. "And I know that you are one of the best profilers that _I _have ever worked with - so you know that I'm not lying. You know that if I was the one who betrayed you then I wouldn't have even come here." He frowned. "Emily, I'm just so glad that you're _alive _- I thought you really had died. Obviously I couldn't go to the funeral, but I had Aaron Hotchner lay flowers on your grave for me, I-"

She could not be sure whether she did it on purpose or not, but she dropped the gun from her hand. She was smart enough to know that too many facts contradicted the _theory _that Clyde had been working with Doyle all along. She let out a long sigh.

"When did you find out that I wasn't really buried? Who told you?"

He walked across and sat in the chair next to her bed. His eyes were still watery. "Aaron Hotchner. He contacted me about three days ago. He didn't say very much except that I would find you under the name Leslie Sloane, in a hospital in Tulsa. I didn't believe him at first but then it all seemed to make sense."

"I didn't know that you were such good friends." She tried to deflect from the way he was looking at her when he mentioned Hotch, like he was sorry that he had to, as if he was mentioning a friend of hers whose death had brought her great pain.

"He caught me trying to leave the state right after you went hunting for Doyle and he wanted all of the information I could give him. I told him I had taken oaths, but he never accepted that, told me if anything happened to you he would hold me personally responsible and I think the direct quote was _'destroy me'_." Clyde paused only for a moment. "He went to extreme lengths to find you."

She tried to deflect again the way he was looking at her and speaking to her. "Yeah well, I told you he's the best, and he is a man who goes to extreme lengths." She wished that her heart didn't ache at the thought of him desperate to find her.

Clyde refused to drop his gaze of scrutiny despite the fact that she was busying herself with her nails again. "Are you going to get back in contact with him and the rest of your team? I assume that you'll want to-"

"It doesn't matter what I _want_." She was snapping but she couldn't help herself. "They think the exact same as you thought - that I'm dead. And if Hotch told you that I was alive, then he definitely didn't tell them."

Clyde threw her a phone. "Tell them yourself then. I thought they were you're family, who you loved. What's stopping you?"

She didn't know why she felt like she couldn't trust him anymore. But the truthful answer was guilt and she said: "I don't know."

"You did what you had to." He seemed to know anyway. He always seemed to know everything. "And they will come to understand that." She looked up when he said that. He raised an eyebrow. "Did you expect me to pretend that they would accept it from the start? Of course they won't - it sounds to me like even our friend Aaron is a bit pissed off about it. But time heals all wounds...and they've missed you."

A lone tear leaked from her eye but she wiped it away quickly. When she looked up from the phone, she saw that Clyde's eyes had never left her face, and that he was even smiling. "How do you even know?" she asked. "How do you know that they _can_ forgive me?"

"Because I know that they love you." Clyde did not hesitate in answering. "Why do you think Aaron Hotchner called me to tell me that you were still alive? He doesn't know me really and he doesn't owe me anything. It wasn't to ease my grief. It was because he knew that I would come and see you - it was because he may not have had the heart to come himself, but he didn't want you to be alone either."

She closed her eyes to avoid shedding more tears. And with all of her heart Emily Prentiss hoped and wished and _willed_ that he was right.

_Forgiveness seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule. Lewis B. Smedes_.


	2. A Move of Fate

**Thanks for all the reviews, I love getting your feedback and it's really appreciated! This story is most definitely a work in progress and will be updated regularly. I am experimenting with a different point of view this time, so please let me know what you think. Hope you all enjoy this chapter and others to come! C. **

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><p>He had gone through his life believing that there was no such thing as fate. He had rejected all teachings of providence and destiny from an early age because he had made up his mind as a ten year old boy that there was only one secret to the way the world worked and that was choice. Even at times when he had every reason to doubt that this was true, that you lived not only by the choices that you made, he had stood firm in his own sort of religion.<p>

But seeing that case file drop onto his desk with such a loud _thud_ that day forced him to conclude that there were times when everyone must question whatever it is they have a conviction in. Because sometimes life does everything in its power to prove that you are wrong, and that you don't understand it, and that there is a bigger plan which some sort of a higher power deems you not to need to know. "We have a new case in Tulsa, Oklahoma." Sometimes life takes its own course.

The rest of the team were blissfully unaware to the significance of Penelope Garcia's words. But then none of them knew that they had been deceived and none of them knew that one aspect of the past three years of their life had been a very elaborate lie which had been crafted for their own safety and the safety of their friend whom they believed to be dead. How could any of them have known, as he did, that she was probably somewhere in Tulsa?

He knew that she had been brought into hospital following Ian Doyle's death, something which suggested to him that perhaps she had played a bigger part in his death than any of the police who were supposedly responsible. But he hadn't known how he could possibly relay his team that information and explain to them that his actions had been for the best, that there had been no other choice but for Emily Prentiss to fake her own death. He had recognized at the time that the plan was the only option but he had never liked it and now, three years on, he felt more ashamed than ever at the part he had played.

He had watched the team grieve for her. He had watched them all fall apart. He had counted the painstaking hours it had taken for them to build their spirits up again, and find light at the end of the tunnel, and move _on _from what had happened. He had gone through stages of missing her terribly, and then blaming her for all the pain she had brought, and even hating her for never answering all of the questions he still had. The team had needed her _- he _had needed her. And she had ran.

Despite his insistence that they could work something out, that he could keep everybody safe, she had ended up fleeing the hospital while the others presumed her to be dead like they had been told. He hated the way that she had just simply _left _and he hated the thought of her just strolling back into his life - almost as much as he hated the idea of her staying away and carrying on the act of being dead. He wanted her to come back but he just didn't understand how she _could_.

"Carl Harrison abducted his ex-wife and three kids, along with her new husband and their baby, in the early hours of yesterday morning. Police found the new spouse's body on the roadside this morning." Garcia brought up pictures on the interactive screen with the remote.

Ashley Seaver sat up straight in her seat. She was the one with the least memories of their colleague because she had also been the agent to most recently join the team. She was admired by everybody for her clarity and excellent decisiveness in the field and had turned into one of the academy's best ever produced. "He wants to play spouses with her and be the father to her children? Removing the biological father could make him feel like a surrogate."

"He doesn't seem to be interested in the child whose not biologically his at all." Garcia refreshed the image. "If you'll all turn to page three, I think you'll find that he dumped the baby with the spouse." She paused. "Alive, thank God." A smile flickered round the table at the tone of relief which had flooded the red head's voice.

"But he left the baby alive..." Rossi mused aloud. "Couldn't bring himself to kill an innocent?"

"Or maybe the mother wouldn't allow him to - she wouldn't want to part with her child, but if it was a choice between that or the child be killed...It's possible that she told him to leave the baby by the roadside and he listened." Reid interjected.

Morgan frowned. "Harrison was the one to file for the divorce. She went to great lengths to avoid any kind of a separation, but he basically paid her off. If he went to so much trouble to divorce then how can he still love her enough to let her influence his decisions? She obviously wouldn't have wanted him to kill the new spouse but he did that anyway."

All eyes flickered to Aaron Hotchner. He was staring at the name of the city they were bound for, printed in bold on the case file, and it seemed to glare back at him so defiantly like another person who had once sat at that table did too. He knew two things for sure: she was out there and she would know that they were out there too the minute that the jet touched down.

He met all of the gazes focused on him. Learning the truth would break all of their hearts all over again and he knew it. But there was a woman out there who was mothering three terrified children, doing her very best to keep them safe, and it was clearly too emotionally complicated for the police department to handle on their own. It was his duty - and their duty - to help. No matter what was waiting for them in Tulsa, they still had to go. He couldn't reject the case. He might have always believed in choice but this, he decided, was a move entirely down to fate.

"Maybe this has nothing to do with the spouse at all. Whatever this is related to, we have a case here. Wheels up in thirty minutes." He stood up from the desk as the team scattered around him and he watched them hurry to the bullpen to retrieve their things.

This move may have been down to fate but it was made all the same. And now it was only a matter of time until he saw what her next move would be.

_Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling. Seneca. _


	3. A Phone Call From The Arrivals Lounge

**Again thanks for all the reviews, as ever they are invaluable. While I admit that this chapter seems pretty insignificant, I feel that it is important in foreshadowing later chapters of the fic. Also I apologize for any typos, as this chapter was written within an hour and there wasn't much proofreading. To answer your question, HGRHfan35, I honestly don't know whether JJ will have returned full-time to the BAU by the time this fic is completed, but as you will read in this chapter she does have a part to play in the fic. Enjoy! C. **

Jennifer Jareau examined the picture printed on the front page of the newspaper in front of her. The larger portrait photograph she recognized as Ian Doyle and the much smaller one to the bottom of the age she could easily identify as Emily Prentiss. It was the same picture they had framed and given pride of place on the bureau's wall of heroes, those who had died in the line of duty.

She had bought the paper on her way to work exactly twenty one mornings ago but had known, from the minute she caught sight of the headline, that there would never be any time to read it. There had been no authorization to have Doyle _arrested_, yet alone shot dead, and as far as she had known they had been no closer to finding him then that the bureau had three years ago.

It had been her job for the past three weeks to make sure that this none of this information was leaked to the public and that instead it seemed an official operation had taken place, during which two officers had been forced to fire. She had to make it public that they would be facing an internal affairs commission and that their haste actions would have repercussions - not that anybody protested the death of a man like Doyle.

"Your cell's been ringing upstairs, darlin'." William LaMontagne arrived in the kitchen with their toddler asleep in his arms. His hair was unkempt and he was unshaved - but then the early mornings had hardly been agreeable to any of them. But it was one of the few catches that came with her job. The other was having to withhold information and mislead the public when work demanded it.

She did her best not to grimace openly. She knew exactly who was ringing he - she supposed it was the same man who had been ringing her for the past seventy two hours. She had known from the moment that the story had broken in the newspapers, he would make contact. Aaron Hotchner was like clock work in that way. But she had been evading him from the very first call - she was determined not to speak to him. At least not about what he wanted to discuss.

For three years she had tried convincing herself that she had helped her friend. But when she thought of all her other friends and how they didn't know the truth, her confidence was shaken, and it was easy to blame Emily for causing the heartache, easy to think that Emily was selfish to leave. At times she was angry with herself but most of the time she found that she was angry with her friend.

She knew that it was stupid, that there never had been any choice in the situation, but maybe the pain of knowing that Emily had kept such a huge part of her life from them in the past still stung. Perhaps she hadn't healed from the wounds left by the actions her friend had taken, the things that she had done.

"Probably just work." JJ did her best to dismiss it with a white lie, so that she would not have to elaborate. She had never liked deceiving her partner and did her best to avoid any situation where she would have to. But lately it seemed like Will was only ever asking questions she couldn't give a straight answer to. "And whatever it is can wait."

Will smiled gruffly at her and rocked Henry gently. Their son looked like an angel when he slept. He seemed nothing like the toddler who demanded so much time, effort and love. Not that either of his parents minded - both were truely devoted. But ever since Will had found a secretarial post in the District Attorney's office it had been difficult to grant their prince's every wish.

"Sure it can." He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. "Seems like everybody's rushing places. That's why I thought we could slow down today, since I have the afternoon off, maybe take a picnic to the park - but if work is that desperate to get a hold of you then maybe I should just take Henry to see Kate?"

"Today is my first day off in weeks. Of course we should spend it together, really, I meant when I said that whatever it is can wait. Just let's go back to bed for a bit." She stood up from the breakfast table and shoved the paper back into one of the kitchen drawers. Shut away in the darkness she didn't have to deal with it and it was easier to pretend that she never would.

"Can you call me back when you get this message? I understand that you're probably busy at work but you know that we need to talk. Ignoring my calls isn't going to change what's already passed. We need to look forward now. Please, Jennifer. Bye." Aaron Hotchner pocketed his phone quickly as he saw Ashley Seaver approach him in the arrivals hall with two plastic cups of coffee in her hand.

The young blonde eyed him with what seemed like mild interest but he could tell that she was trying her best to profile his behaviour. Even he had to concede that he had been very uncharacteristic lately - but it was the thought of any member of the team finding out the truth at the wrong time. Not that he was sure there would ever be a _right_ time to tell them that he had helped their colleague fake her death and allowed them to live with the grief.

Ashley sighed after a few seconds of studying his expression carefully and deciding that it was passive as usual. "Sometimes it feels like there's no getting used to touring around the country in that jet. The trip really takes it out of you. But I guess the best remedy is a coffee." She handed him one of the cups and waited.

"Emily used to say that it felt just the same as being driven around in a car." He found the words had slipped out before he could stop them. "She probably thought of it as a normality, maybe even the closest thing she had to home since she did travel the world with her mother when she was younger."

Her expression might have softened a little but all that Aaron could read on her face was confusion. She could not understand why he had mentioned their late colleague, and she was shocked by the fact that he had used the agent's first name. As far as she could recall he had never mentioned her to any of the team following her death and she knew that using his first name was too personal an effect for him.

Ashley hid her surprise with sympathy. "That's something that I didn't know. She never mentioned it to me. Her mother was a diplomat though, right?"

Aaron cursed himself. He was well aware that he had said too much, maybe even revealed too much, and knew that Ashley was too good a profiler to miss the most obvious signs that his recent change of attitude was linked to the raven-haired woman who had once worked with them.

He nodded curtly. "Yes. She was an ambassador I think. Like our first victim." He hoped that drawing a connection between the case and Emily he would have thrown Ashley off the scent. But even though she nodded understandingly, she looked anything but thrown.

He knew he would just have to be a little more careful about what he let slip.


	4. Complications

**While I didn't expect to be updating so soon, this chapter practically wrote itself, so I thought that there was no point in delaying. Enjoy! C.**

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><p>Faking her own death had been the easier part. She had a little experience when it came to that particular department as Lauren Reynold's had been convincing enough for at least eight years. But she was beginning to find that coming back to life was the more difficult of the two. She decided it was because the weapons trader had never been a real person anyway and was meant to have stayed dead. Whereas Emily Prentiss was entirely real and she had left so much more than a superficial world behind her when she had supposedly died.<p>

Who was the first person to call when you were back from the dead? She knew that her relationship with her mother could have never been described as _loving, _but there was something wrong with the thought of keeping her mother in the dark for any longer. She was her daughter after all and no parent deserved to be put through the loss of their child.

But how could she call Elizabeth without expecting the whole world to find out? Her death had been high profile - and surely that meant that her 'rebirth' would be high profile too? And if it was going to be splashed about the broadsheets and tabloids for days then she would rather that the people who she cared about most knew the truth first. She just didn't know how she could tell them.

The other disadvantage of having spent the past three years convincing people she was dead became obvious within the first couple of days she spent in Tulsa. She had contacts in this part of the world, people who could put her up, old friends who she would have liked to talk to once more - but they all believed her to be dead. And she had firmly resolved that her team would be the first to know she was still alive - so until she brought herself to get in touch, she could not reveal herself to any of the other acquaintances she had in the city.

Clyde Easter had brought her to view an apartment in the south side of the city. He had agreed to staying around for a few weeks, until she could find her feet, but only because he was the only one who knew the truth. "Not the only one," Clyde had pointed out. "There are at least two other people out there - both of them your friends - who know the truth as well."

She hadn't said to him then the first thing that had crossed her mind_. But you're the only one who came looking for me_. She came very close to calling them some nights when she was on her own, with nothing to do but stare at the cheap cell phone he had offered her that day, but each time she busied herself cleaning or cooking or doing something to take her mind off it. Because she always remembered that just as she knew where to find them, they had known where to find her, and neither of them had shown up. The bruises of that knowledge were still fresh on her skin.

"What if you can never bring yourself to contact them?" Clyde had asked. "Then they'll never know the truth - nor will your parents or any of the other people you left behind. Surely if you feel so much guilt, you know that you _owe_ it to them."

She had been a little angry when he'd said that. He knew she felt an unbearable pain in her chest when she thought of how she'd hurt them and for the first time he had used it against her - another sign of his impatience at her reluctance. But she had fought to remain calm because he meant well. He just wanted everything to go back to normal, for him and for her, although she was beginning to think it never would. That was why she told him to leave.

Now, outside the airport as she waited for a taxi, she could only remember his last words to her before he'd stalked through departures. "Things will never sort themselves out. You do know that. Most people of action are inclined to-"

She had offered him a weak smile. "Fatalism - and those of thought believe in providence." She shuddered at the memory of the other man who'd said that to her only three years ago. "I know. But I also know that there's a time for everything. Now just isn't that time."

"There's never a specific time for anything. Only the amount of time it takes us to work up the courage to go after what we want. Take care." He had hugged her briefly, gathered his things, and disappeared into the throng of travelers.

Some of them would be going home - to parents or spouses or children. Others would be going away. But the one thing that they had which Emily envied them for was a _destination_. Some kind of goal that they were working towards as they took their seats on the plane. She didn't have anywhere to be and she certainly had nothing to work for - or maybe it was that she had too _much _to work for and no way of achieving it.

She stood outside and breathed in the crisp autumnal air. She reached into the pocket of the jacket she was wearing and retrieved the cell from her pocket. She hesitated, staring at the buttons, wondering if maybe this minute was the time when she'd finally dial the number, if she would be right to. And that was when she remembered Clyde's words. When had she stopped believing that people didn't make their own fate?

It took her only two seconds and then the phone was ringing. Her heart seemed like it was about to explode out of her rib cage as she pressed the phone to her ear and waited, waited in anticipation, expecting something that she couldn't quite explain, and all this time a pang of lonliness clenching her stomach. She didn't even know that the number still worked, and for a second she hoped that it didn't, but then the phone was answered and she could hear a sigh, and heavy breathing.

And then a voice. "Please listen to me Hotch. I get that you want to talk about this and that you want to work it out, but I just _can't_. I don't know that I will _ever_ be able to talk about Em - Emily. You said that you wanted to talk about the future but there _isn't_ one and you're lying to yourself if you say any different. She - she may not have actually died but the life she lived did. There's no going back to it. Not for her and not for any of us. I just - I can't deal with this now." A distressed voice. A voice belonging to Jennifer Jareau, before suddenly the line went dead.

She didn't know what she had been hoping for. She was a practical person and she had always known that it wouldn't work. She blinked back the tears that were now threatening to fall and stared blankly at the cell in her hand for a few moments.

Her life was dead. She had been listening to that little voice in her head that had been telling her none of it had to be gone but now she had heard the cold, hard truth from her friend. And though her spirits were crushed she was also glad in a way. She knew now that in the long run she was doing the right thing, she was saving them from the pain.

But she still pocketed the phone. She couldn't walk away from everything she'd had before. Even if she couldn't exactly if she could never return to it, she couldn't turn her back on the past either.

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><p>"We need to work out what Carl Harrison's relationship with his wife was like before they divorced." Derek Morgan stared at the man in the picture - tall, blonde and with a loving smile on his face, he hardly seemed like the type of perso to abduct the children he was holding in his arms and the woman standing next to him. But that was exactly what he had done and it was just more evidence that people sometimes behaved strangely.<p>

Aaron Hotchner paced from one side of the room to the other. "We need to work out _why _they divorced." But if there was one thing Morgan had learned from profiling, it was that they didn't change without good reason. He couldn't tell what Harrison's trigger had been anymore that he could work out what had been his boss'.

"Neighbours said that they were perfectly happy - the kids went to the local school, they were married in the local church. They were totally settled, upstanding members of the community." Spencer Reid's brow furrowed in confusion. "Could Debera Harrison have been having an affair with the man found on the side of the road?"

Ashley Seaver shook her head. "Not with him anyway, the sister said that they first met two years _after_ the divorce. And anyway she was totally devoted to her husband when they were married - she protested the divorce. Not the actions of a woman who was trying to self-sabotage their marriage. Maybe he had an affair...?"

"But then why would she have protested the divorce? He agreed to a settlement of thousands - but he didn't get custody of the children, he didn't get the house: everything that he did was an effort to get her to agree. He gave more than she was entitled to. If he had been unfaithful and she had found out, then she would have told him to leave, or at least made more demands at the preliminary hearing." Hotch stopped pacing.

Rossi shrugged. "Maybe he was having an affair and she just didn't know about it. He was desperate to get out of the marriage and if she wasn't cheating on him, then it looks like it was perfect, so why was he so determined to leave? There was somebody knew and he wanted to pursue a relationship with this new woman instead."

"But then we still have to work out why the _hell _he's taken his family and hers now." Derek Morgan glanced around at his colleagues. "She married this new man two years ago and their baby is nearly a year old. She hasn't been a part of anything that could have triggered this reaction and he doesn't feel bitter about the divorce because he was the one to walk away from her. So why now?"

Ashley tapped a pen against the table for a moment in thought before she spoke. "I think we're looking at this the wrong way. It could have absolutely nothing to do with the wife - or the kids, since the custody agreements were settled at the same time as the divorce. What if it's about this new woman he left his marriage for? Things haven't worked out with her and he gets angry because he left his wife for her. So he goes back to the wife, kills her husband and gets rid of the child, so that he can go back to the way things were?"

There was silence as they all considered this assessment. Reid rooted through the files and shook his head after a moment. "He never remarried."

"And?" Derek asked.

"Well he was divorced nearly seven years ago. That's a long time to be with somebody and not get married - I mean Debera Harrison was only in this new relationship for three years before they got married. So for this new woman to have been his trigger, things would have had to go wrong recently, and it seems unlikely that they'd be together for so long and not get married. He has no problem with commitment - he left his wife for this woman. So they probably separated years ago."

Hotch folded his arms. "I think that we could be on the right track here, but we don't even know if there was an affair. Morgan and Seaver - talk to Harrison's family and see if they know anything about another woman. Rossi and I are going to the dump site off the main road. Reid, I want you to stay here and call Garcia - look at his recent financial activities and check out the possibility of another recent murder, looking at a woman who would be a few years younger than him, in this area. It's a long shot but look into it and check for anything that suggests it's not random, that it relates back to him. We don't know where he is right now or where he's headed so he has an advantage, but we'll have to work with what we have for now."

* * *

><p>They had only been in the jeep for ten minutes but that was all it took for Morgan to work out that there was something wrong with Seaver. She was quietly and determinedly glancing out the window as if the outside scene was the most interesting thing she'd ever been lucky enough to witness.<p>

"Ashley. Is there something you want to talk to me about?" Morgan asked. He had gotten to know her over the years that they had been working together - she would never lie to him, she would just studiously try to avoid the subject. But if he could raise the subject directly it would force her to answer him truthfully. "You can trust me with anything you know." He chuckled dryly. "Pretty much said those exact words to Emily before she - you know."

He winced. He knew what Emily would have done in that situation - made it into a joke so that she could break any tension that built up. It was just another one of those moments he had every day when he was reminded that he missed her. He missed her a lot.

Seaver shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "What is it with everybody and talking about her these days?" Morgan visibly sharpened at this comment so she pressed on. "Sorry - I didn't mean to sound like she's not important or she never existed. She was your friend and-"

"Yours too." He took a deep breath and managed to compose himself. "She liked you a lot. She told me so herself a few days after you came on that first case with us. You're allowed to grieve for her too."

"That's not the point but it's close. Grieving - I thought that everybody was done with that. I know the loss never goes away, but I felt like everybody managed to move on a little, to start to _live _instead of just _cope._" Ashley expertly managed to avoid admitting she had felt no entitlement to grieve when Emily had passed away as she had been the one to know her the least.

"So I guess I'm not the first person to mention Emily today?" he said. He had a funny feeling that he knew who the other culprit was but he waited until Seaver was ready to tell him.

She let out a long sigh. "No. When we were in the airport Hotch said something about her - and you know how strange he's been acting lately. But he's never, _ever_ talked so openly about her. I mean I never even said anything that could relate that directly to her and _he _was the one who mentioned her. By first name."

Morgan took a left turn and continued to drive straight. He couldn't deny that his superior had been acting strangely recently but this came as a surprise. There was out of the ordinary and then there was out of the possible. He didn't know how to answer what he took to be Seaver's concerns. But she was staring at him with wide brown eyes and he had to throw her some sort of hope.

"Doyle was shot dead by police three weeks ago and ever since then Hotch's been a little different than usual. But who wouldn't be? He spent a lot of his spare time trying to track down the man without any leads and then Doyle just turns up out of nowhere and had a shoot off with the cops." Morgan shrugged. "It shook him up - it shook us all up."

From the expression on her face Morgan could tell that the blonde didn't believe this for a second. "Hotch has always been cool and composed. Even when she died he held it together, in a way he held _us _together. So you're honestly going to tell me that he crumbles because it's all over now?"

"Don't forget that he's human too. When Haley and Jack were taken into protective custody he lost it big time and I think he's acting the same way now that he did then." Morgan took another deep breath. "Sometimes I think that he's the one who misses her the most. They had the - well sometimes I think they had the potential to be more than friends."

Seaver didn't argue with him and when they got to the house she fled from the car quickly. He wondered if he had managed to convince her anymore than he had been able to convince himself and he certainly hoped so.

_We know the past and its great events, the present in its multitudinous complications, chiefly through faith in the testimony of others. Matthew Simpson._


End file.
